Point of Law: The Tribunal could not have disturbed the said orders in the proceedings, which only challenged the order made by the Deputy Collector. It was submitted that the trust had also filed a Civil Suit, the suit came to be dismissed for want of prosecution and trust had not taken any further steps to either have the suit restored or challenge the order of rejection in appropriate proceedings. Therefore, the trust could not claim possession of the property, which was held by the petitioner as a tenant duly declared to be so under the provisions of the Act. The learned advocate, therefore, urged that the impugned order of the Tribunal was not only not supported by the evidence on record, but had been passed after ignoring relevant evidence, and hence, was perverse order, which was required to be interfered.

JUDGMENT :

J.B.PARDIWALA, J.

1. This appeal under Clause 15 of the Letters Patent is at the instance of an unsuccessful writ applicant of a writ application and is directed against the order passed by a learned Single Judge of this Court dated 21.04.2009 in the Special Civil Application No.14268 of 2008, by which, the learned Single Judge declined to entertain the writ application and rejected the same thereby affirming the order passed by the Gujarat Revenue Tribunal as challenged by the writ applicant.

2. This litigation has some history and we would like to narrate the same in brief. The appeal before us is of the year 2018. The impugned order passed by the learned Single Judge is of the year 2009. In such circumstances, we inquired with Mr. Raval, the learned counsel appearing for the appellant as to why there has been a long and inordinate delay in filing the appeal. Mr. Raval pointed out that the Special Civil Application No.14268 of 2008 was filed by the writ applicant through her power of attorney holder, namely, Keshavlal Chhotalal Patel, seeking to challenge the order dated 31.07.2008 passed by the Gujarat Revenue Tribunal in the Revision Application No.782 of 1994. The said special civil application was ordered to be rejected summarily by a learned Single Judge of this Court vide order dated 21.04.2009. Against the said order passed by the learned Single Judge, the appellant herein preferred the Letters Patent Appeal No.1030 of 2009, which came to be dismissed as not maintainable following a Larger Bench judgment of this Court in the case of G.S.R.T.C. vs. F.M. Mogal, (2014) 1 GLH 1. Mr. Raval further pointed out that being aggrieved by the order dated 21.04.2009 passed by the learned Single Judge in the Special Civil Application No.14268 of 2008, the appellant herein went before the Supreme Court by filing the SLP (Civil) No.35858 of 2014. While the SLP of the appellant was pending, the Supreme Court delivered a judgment in the case of Shri Jogendrasinhji Vijaysinghji vs. State of Gujarat & Ors., (2015) 9 SCC 1. In view of the judgment of the Supreme Court in the case of Jogendrasinhji (supra), the appellant herein sought permission to withdraw the SLP. The Supreme Court, while allowing the appellant to withdraw the SLP, clarified that it would be open for the appellant herein to file a fresh letters patent appeal and the maintainability of the same shall be considered by the Court keeping in mind the dictum as laid in the judgment of Jogendrasinhji (supra).

3. Thus, it appears that after the SLP came to be withdrawn, the present letters patent appeal came to be filed before this Court on 31.01.2017 with an application for condonation of delay of 2812 days. It appears that a Coordinate Bench of this Court by an order dated 09.01.2018, condoned the delay of 2182 days and that is how the present appeal came to be registered.

4. It is very distressing to note that although the delay was ordered to be condoned way back on 09.01.2018 and the present appeal came to be registered accordingly, still for a period of almost three years, no steps were taken to get this appeal heard. We take notice of the fact that in the year 2018, this appeal came up for not less than fifteen times on board and in the year 2019, it came upon board for not less than ten times. Thereafter, came the Lock-down and today once again the appeal has come up for hearing.

5. We have heard Mr. Harsh Raval, the learned counsel appearing for the appellant, Mr. Jitendra Patel, the learned counsel appearing for the respondent No.1-Trust and Mr. P.J. Yagnik, the learned counsel appearing for the respondent No.5 (the purchaser of the property in question).

6. It appears from the materials on record that the subject matter of this litigation is a parcel of land bearing Block No.148, admeasuring 68300.00 sq. mts, situated at the village Zarna, Taluka: Valiya, District: Bharuch. One Shri Prabhudas Thakordas Bhagat was the owner of the land in question. Prabhudas execu